Super Improvers Wall, Webcast #503

We educators have unwittingly enrolled our students in an “education caste system” according to Whole Brain Teaching Coach Chris Biffle on the Super Improvers Wall.  Coach further adds that “the only fair race is the one you run against yourself.” On both counts, I completely agree with Coach. Many students, especially our intellectually challenged students, are working as hard as they can, yet they never seem to be properly rewarded under the grading system of most public schools.  On the opposite end of this spectrum are students who are able to put forth very little effort, yet are still rewarded with straight As.  Neither situation is fair to the student.

With the Super Improvers Wall, students can be rewarded for any activity in which they show improvement, such as following procedures, keeping their area in the classroom clean, showing kindness to others, or showing growth in critical thinking or writing.  The structure must be woven throughout the day, much the same as the Scoreboard. We need to emphasize to the students that they are competing against themselves, not each other, so they can constantly be improving. The whole idea is to reward kids for meeting goals that they set for themselves.

Students must earn ten stars at each level to move up a level.  However, on my Super Improvers Wall, students will earn a photo at the third, fifth, and eighth levels. On the fourth, sixth and ninth levels, they will only need to earn five points to see their photo and move to the next level. You should have seen the grins when they heard that!

Many thanks to Coach Biffle for pointing out that "rewarding for improvement should be our number one teaching goal."

This wide view of our Super Improvers Wall shows how I included both my morning and afternoon classes, which total 46 students in all. Above the S.I.W. are the five WBT classroom rules that we practice several times each day. To the right is our Cosmic Genius Ladder that we use to improve the quality of our sentences and our critical thinking skills. On the shelves are book boxes my husband built for my students to store some of their library books, together with their reading and writing journals. I acquired the used chairs from an office that closed and re-upholstered them.

Thank you for reading my blog!